


Slip Away Across the Universe

by lovesrogue36



Category: Fringe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-12-08
Updated: 2012-05-01
Packaged: 2017-10-27 02:41:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 16,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/290778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovesrogue36/pseuds/lovesrogue36
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Years after the end of the world, Peter Bishop dropped his young son off at school and went in search of the woman he had lost over and over and over again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Future Epilogue

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers through 3.13
> 
> Disclaimer: I do not own Fringe, nor am I associated with Joshua Jackson, Anna Torv or JJ Abrams.
> 
> A/N: Although we’ve only seen one other universe, Walter implied in the beginning of season 2 (and maybe the end of season 1?) that there are infinite universes each based on different choices so this plays off of that idea.

 

 **A Future Epilogue**

Years after the end of the world, Peter Bishop dropped his young son off at school. He pushed his hands in his pockets as he watched the little boy run off to join his friends, a hint of a smile on his face.

“Which one is yours?” a quiet voice asked from beside him and he turned, only barely startled, to face the pretty blond beside him.

“Ah… Charlie,” he answered, gesturing to him. “The little shit over there in the corner. You?”

She laughed merrily, smiling up at him. “None of them, actually. Ella’s my niece,” she explained.

Peter nodded understandingly, holding out a hand. “I’m Peter.”

She paused, sliding her hand into his. “Olivia.”

“Would you… like to have breakfast?” he offered. “There’s a great little diner around the corner.”

Olivia raised an eyebrow, laughing softly. “I don’t know if I would call Denny’s great but…” She trailed off, a soft smile tugging at her lips. “Stale coffee’s on me.”

Peter glanced back at Charlie for a moment, letting her hand slip from his. “Lead the way,” he smiled.

They sat in a Denny’s for two hours, talking and laughing over pancakes and far too much coffee. “So what do you do, Peter?” she asked him at one point. He replied that he was a chemistry professor at MIT. When she asked what MIT was, he lied and said it was a Michigan university. Sometimes he forgot nothing was _always_ the same.

She told him she worked for the FBI. It was all he could do to hide his surprise when she added that she was only a secretary but she liked her job. Sometimes he forgot Olivia wasn’t always the tough, hardboiled crimefighter. (Although he would always find it difficult to wrap his head around the universe where she was a candystriper.)

They wandered along the river all day, laughing until they cried when they got caught in an unexpected rainstorm and had to huddle inside a bus stop for twenty minutes, soaked to the bone. She invited him up to her apartment to get dry and he followed her inside with a desperate longing in his eyes. She changed and he stripped down to jeans and a t-shirt and they sat at the kitchen table talking while their clothes tossed around in the dryer.

“So… where’s Charlie’s mom?” she asked hesitantly, hands wrapped around the warm mug between them.

Peter glanced down into his own cup for a long moment. “That’s a loaded question,” he murmured finally.

“I’m sorry; it’s none of my business…” She scrambled to apologize but he waved a hand.

“No, please. I’d be curious too. Um…” Peter swallowed, trying to decide how to answer her without entirely lying. “His blood mother died giving birth to him,” he began, blinking to try and wipe away the memory of a redheaded Olivia in a dingy hotel room halfway to the middle of nowhere, squeezing his hand so hard he thought his fingers would break, sweat dripping down her cheeks with Charlie, Lincoln and Walter vainly trying to save her _and_ the bab-

Olivia reached slowly across the table, her hand sliding over his. “Are you all right?” she asked gently, bringing him back to Earth. This Earth, anyway.

Peter shook his head, somehow nodding at the same time. “Yeah, sorry. Um- And his mom, the woman he would have called Mom, anyway, my- well, we never married but I would have, given the chance… she was killed in- in a- an- explosion. She… worked for the FBI and there was a bomb threat and… she didn’t make it.” He closed his eyes, wetting his lips slowly, steadily. _Not so much an explosion as an apocalypse but close enough…_

“My god, I’m so sorry,” Olivia breathed, lightly squeezing his hand. “I can’t even begin to imagine what that’s like.”

“Yeah.” He swallowed hard. “Poor kid lost his whole world,” he murmured, tears stinging his eyes.

“Sounds like you did too,” she pointed out gently. “Did you love them both?”

Peter wiped at his eyes with his thumb, nodding. “Yeah. Very much. Um, Charlie was… very much an accident but his mom still meant a lot to me. We weren’t the most orthodox couple and there were times we hated each other but...” he paused, laughing slightly under his breath, “But I did love her. And Li-Um- well, like I said, I would have married his mom if we hadn’t run out of time and, believe me, I’m not the marrying kind.” He glanced up, clearing his throat. “Sorry. I’m usually of the mind that men don’t cry,” he joked half-heartedly.

“Nonsense,” Olivia smiled softly, her hand still resting on his. “Seems like you needed to talk about that.”

He nodded reluctantly. “I hate to but- I don’t get to unload very often. Can’t exactly talk to Charlie,” he admitted with a sigh. “Kid’s been through hell and I like to keep his life as normal as possible.” It wasn’t often possible but he _did_ try.

“What about you? You have to take care of yourself too,” she prodded, thumb rubbing across the back of his hand. “I’ve seen Rachel, my sister, do it time and time again. She throws all her energy into taking care of Ella and then she falls apart.”

Peter hung his head with a shrug, watching her hand intently. “My life’s already been screwed up. Least I can do is try to keep him from becoming me.”

Olivia reached up slowly, smoothing hair back behind his ear. “Now I’m _sure_ that’s not true,” she murmured, fingers sliding down his cheek.

“How do you know? You’ve known me less than a day,” Peter pointed out as he closed his eyes, leaning into her touch.

“I feel like I’ve known you my whole life. Is that cheesy?” she asked as she leaned in, lips a breath away from his.

“No,” he promised in a whisper as he closed the gap, kissing her warm and tender but with a fierce familiarity he just couldn’t help.

She moaned quietly against his lips, her tongue darting out to tease and taunt him. This Olivia was happier, didn’t seem to quite carry the world on her shoulders, so her kiss was sweet, but it held the same intensity Olivia Dunham had always kissed him with, no matter what universe she was from. She brought her hands up to frame his face and he came undone at the seams, pulling her up only to push her down onto the table. It was too fast, too soon, but she didn’t seem to mind, only wrapped her legs around him and nipped at his bottom lip, fingers tangled in his hair.

Peter tugged her black slacks down her thighs, thumbs hooking under a pair of Victoria’s Secret with far more lace than Olivia ever would have worn. He pushed the thought away and continued undressing her, one hand sliding up her ribs beneath her blouse. She moaned in his ear and he shuddered. Her underwear might be different but her voice, her touch, her skin was all the same. She fumbled for a moment with his belt before shoving his pants down, tugging him closer with long, lean legs.

He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her up, whispering an “Are you sure?” in her ear to which she responded vigorously and eagerly, before he sank into her with a moan. Her hands slid around the back of his neck for support as he dropped his forehead onto her shoulder. “Oh god, Liv…” he whispered, the familiar nickname slipping out unchecked.

She didn’t seem to notice – let alone mind – as he rocked slowly in… and out… his hands drifting aimlessly over her skin. Her head fell back and he kissed down between her breasts, popping open one button at a time. Her chest heaved with shallow breaths and shaky moans as he played her, well aware _exactly_ what she liked. (Silently, he had to amend his earlier thought: how Olivia liked to be touched was quite possible the _only_ thing that really was always the same.)

Her nails bit into his shoulders as she came close and he held her up, urging her on, practically begging her to come. It had been far too long since he felt her tighten, felt her lose control for just a moment, and all because of him. (The last two universes, he hadn’t been able to find her.) Olivia gasped his name in his ear as she came, pulling him over with her as she uncoiled in his arms.

He picked Charlie up from school an hour or so later, still happy and loose. Two suitcases sat in the back of the car and the little boy knew what that meant. “I like this one though, Daddy,” he complained quietly, curling up beside his father on the bench seat.

Peter smiled, wrapping an arm around him as he drove, the complicated system of dials on the modified dashboard telling him when they were close to a soft spot. “I do too, kiddo. But just think: maybe we’ll run into Grandpa in the next one, or Uncle Charlie, or Lincoln or Auntie Astrid…” That seemed to cheer the boy up as he prattled on about his long dead family.

Glancing in the rear view mirror, Peter heard that tiny voice of conscience buried inside him somewhere tell him yet again that it was wrong to leave behind dozens of potentially happy lives, not to mention Olivias. He shut it up with two quick, harsh memories:

 _A grave with only a cross with her name carved into it in a little backwater town somewhere along a state highway. No dates, no dash, no evidence of a life that wasn’t even supposed to be present here anyway. Just a funeral attended by six people, a crying baby and the local sheriff who had felt sorry for them, no money to bury their redheaded sister._

 _Blond hair clinging to tear-streaked cheeks as she tried uselessly to shut down the machine deep underneath Massive Dynamics. He had never been able to truly conclude whether it had been the collision of the universes or the bullet his blood father had threatened to put between her eyes that had killed her. (He had been barely coherent for most of the ordeal.) Either way it was his fault._

The tiny voice retreated to its dusty corner of his brain and he looked away from the rear view mirror.


	2. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

The shadows of two normally well-composed FBI cohorts flickered along the wall as they made their way toward the staircase, pausing every few moments as the urge to makeout against the wall like teenagers became entirely too much to handle. Olivia tugged on Peter’s hand as she tiptoed down the stairs, carefully avoiding the creaky step near the bottom. He chuckled, pushing her lightly into the kitchen with a hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle, while his free hand slid over her hip, pressing her back into him suggestively. Nipping at his fingers until he let go with a quiet, laughing yelp, Olivia reached into the freezer for a tub of ice cream, checking thoroughly to be sure that was really what it was, not one of Walter’s experiments, before popping open the lid.

Peter turned his attention to her neck, lips and tongue and teeth worrying the soft skin there, even as his hands made it more and more difficult to keep quiet. Moaning softly, Olivia scooped out a spoonful of good, old-fashioned strawberry ice cream and slid it between her lips. He watched enviously at the way she sucked every last bit of the dessert from her spoon before diving it back into the carton.

A smirk pulled at her lips and she turned in his arms, offering up a heaping scoop. Peter leaned in, happy to take it off her hands, as he lifted her up onto the counter, fingers sneaking beneath the hem of one of his shirts. He licked the ice cream slowly from his lips, drawing a giggle from her with an arch of his eyebrow. Smirking, Peter cupped her chin in his hand and stole a kiss, only to have her wrap her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist.

“ _You_ are entirely too clothed,” he mumbled against her lips, hands straying.

“What, right here?” Olivia whispered back hesitantly, even as a yearning smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.

Peter grinned, nodding. “Oh, _yes_ ,” he promised, his voice hot and sultry on her skin before adding a taunting whisper of, “You can be quiet, can’t you?” She moaned, ready and willing and wanting, until the floor beneath them shook and the lights flickered. They both froze. Earthquakes in Boston typically meant one thing and it was far from conducive to romance.

Squeezing her eyes shut, Olivia whispered a ‘no, no, not now…’ in his ear that he was sure she wasn’t even aware of. Peter pulled away from her slowly, hand sliding up her arm. “Shh, it’s okay, sweetheart…” he whispered soothingly, reaching for his phone.

“Did it work?” A muffled whisper came from the living room and they both jumped, eyes shooting wide open. Olivia scrambled for her gun in the jacket draped over the back of a chair while Peter flipped his phone open, the fact that he got so much use out of Broyles being on his speed dial only briefly bothering him.

Sliding one hand around the corner, Olivia abruptly flipped on the lights, her gun resting firmly on her wrist. “Did _what_ work?” she demanded, only to stop stock still in horror at the trio standing in the Bishops’ living room.

Walter’s footsteps pounded on the cold floor, his sleep-addled voice yelling something about “Did you feel that?” But he too stopped short as he ran into the living room, nearly tumbling over.

Peter stood frozen in the doorway, phone to his ear and shock on his face. _“Peter? Bishop, are you there?”_   Broyles’ voice demanded roughly through the speaker. “Uh, uh, ye-yeah. You’re gonna want to get a team together and get to my house. The other shoe just dropped.” He hung up, hand falling limply to his side.

A redheaded Olivia with circles under her eyes smiled weakly at him. “Hey, Peter. Surprise.” To either side of her stood Charlie and Lincoln, both with concern in their eyes and a hand on one of her arms, supporting her.

All Peter noticed, however, was the rounded belly her hand rested on.

\---

Olivia paced back and forth in the kitchen, still wearing Peter’s shirt but having added a pair of sweatpants before Broyles and the others arrived. She ran her fingers through her hair, glancing masochistically into the living room at Peter and her double. On the fifth or sixth pass, Nina reached out and grabbed her hands firmly. “ _Olivia.”_

She glanced up in surprise before her shoulders sagged. “I’m sorry. Where were we?”

Broyles slid a file across the table to her. “Brandon measured the earthquake at a 3.2. No reported physical damage. We can’t be sure what kind of tears it could have created though.” He went on to tell her more about what little they _did_ know, but she wasn’t listening anymore.

Peter clenched his hands into fists as he watched Lincoln gently press a cold cloth to her forehead. Olivia – _Fauxlivia_ , that is, the fake one, the one he hates, Peter had to remind himself – had collapsed just after crossing over and they were only just now managing to wake her up. “Hey, Liv…” Lincoln murmured softly. “Wake up…”

She blinked up at him wearily, a sigh already on her lips. “The baby…” she breathed, lashes fluttering against her cheeks.

“The little monster’s fine,” Charlie promised with a smile, leaning over the back of the couch to squeeze her hand. “You’re gonna be fine.”

Olivia rolled her eyes at him. “Thanks, Bug Boy,” she grumbled good-naturedly, her eyes fluttering shut as she rested against Lincoln’s shoulder. He chuckled, pressing a soft kiss to her forehead but Peter’s uncharacteristically sharp voice cut between them.

“I’m sorry. Not to break up the sweet little family moment you’ve got going on here but I would really like a good, solid reason for why I didn’t let Olivia shoot you all where you stand,” he demanded, cold and callous.

Charlie glanced up, jaw set. “I think there’s a pretty obviously good reason,” he shot back, his hand tightening around Olivia’s protectively.

Peter looked about ready to shoot him himself and it was only Nina’s hand on his arm that kept him from lunging. “Peter,” she said firmly and simply, yet still leaving little room for misinterpretation. He clenched his jaw, eyes skimming over Olivia’s stomach again as he walked into Walter’s room, grateful Astrid had arrived soon after the others to take over in the vain attempt to keep the older man calm.

Broyles quickly assigned agents to Charlie and Lincoln as Nina rather firmly tried to send Olivia home. “No one knows her like I do. I _was_ her, for God’s sake!” she protested. “No. No, I’m staying.”

“Olivia-” she started to disagree but Peter caught her elbow, shaking his head silently as he stepped outside onto the porch. Nina pressed her lips together lightly, glancing between the tense couple and let the matter rest.

“The other two are being taken in for questioning,” Broyles explained as they all gathered outside.

“They’re quite a handful,” Nina put in dryly. “Took everything to convince them to leave her.”

“It’s up to you whether we take her in or not,” Broyles murmured, glancing between Peter and Olivia, arms crossed, turned away from each other.

Olivia’s jaw tightened fiercely. “We should take her in. No need to treat her any differently.”

Peter huffed, shaking his head. “No, no. We’ll interview her here. No sense in having two of you loose at the FBI sooner than necessary.” They glared at each other so intently for a moment that the other two almost felt they were intruding.

Finally, Olivia clenched her fists, her eyes never leaving Peter’s as she said, “Nina, will you take Walter back with you? He doesn’t need to be here for this.” She turned on her toe without waiting for an answer and marched determinedly back into the house.

The older pair shared a sigh and a worried glance at Peter, his face impassive and stony. “Just a half an hour ago she was… _giggling_. Actually _happy_. Did I just imagine it again?” he asked, voice soft and broken.

Nina waved Broyles into the house and rested a hand on Peter’s arm. “No,” she promised gently. “I saw it too. You _do_ make her happy, Peter.”

“Then why can’t she trust that I’ll choose her?” Peter glanced down at her and it nearly broke her heart to see the tears teetering in his eyes. Faltering, Nina tried to forget Sam’s warning but her own doubt must have shown on her face. “Does no one have any faith in me?” he asked softly, pulling away and leaving her there on the sidewalk.

When she finally worked up the courage to walk back into the house, Astrid was the only one who noticed her. “Walter’s packing a bag,” she said with a sigh, placing the now-melted strawberry ice cream back in the freezer. “He isn’t happy about being shipped off to New York but I don’t think Olivia will budge on this one.”

“No, I don’t believe she will. She’s only trying to protect him,” Nina murmured, glancing into the living room at two versions of the woman in question and the man in love with them both.

Astrid followed her gaze, swallowing hard. “You don’t think… I mean, it has to be a ruse, right? It can’t really be Peter’s.”

Sam’s voice echoed in her ears, ( _“I wouldn’t be so sure of that…”_ ), and Nina bit back a shudder. “We’ll see,” she promised.

 


	3. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

Sliding a hand through auburn hair, Olivia sighed and glanced up at three people who collectively despised everything about her. Tholivia (their Olivia, as coined by Lincoln and Charlie), the cool blond with the sister and the niece and the boyfriend. Agent Broyles, the- it took everything she had to keep from losing her lunch at the thought of his wife and child back home. And then there was Peter.

Father of her child. Man she couldn’t help but love. Son of the one man she hated more than any other. So many ways to describe Peter Bishop. She squeezed her eyes shut just for a moment, holding back the hormonal tears that threatened to break past her careful barriers yet again.

“Well. Just us now, huh? Awfully cozy and intimate,” she joked weakly, sitting up against the couch, one hand under her stomach.

The three of them sat down slowly, as if they were afraid she might bolt if they became too complacent. “Ms. Dunham, I think you’d better start at the beginning,” Broyles said dryly.

She swallowed hard, nodding as she spared a glance at her double. “Um…” Her face was impassive and unreadable. (Olivia almost felt sorry for her. It had to be hard on a person, being that strong.) “Well. I… I found out about… about the pregnancy when I’d been home a few weeks. My boyfriend had just come back from a trip and there was this scientist with these sheep bugs and-” She paused, clearing her throat. “I’m sorry, that’s irrelevant.” Pressing her fingers to her forehead and closing her eyes for a moment, she curled her legs up onto the couch beneath her.

“Anyway, moral of the story is that the Secretary found out I was pregnant with his grandchild and practically had me under lock and key for over two months. There was a security detail posted at my apartment, following me in my car… I just took it as worry, considering he lost his son,” she paused to glance warily at Peter, “but when Lincoln found the tap on my line we realized it was more than that. When he confronted him about it, he came clean, assuming Lincoln was more loyal to the government than to me I guess.”

“I take it that was a wrong assumption,” Peter murmured, crossing his arms over his chest.

Olivia smirked slightly, pressing her lips together. “Not the best, no.”

 _“Liv? Liv, listen to me!” Lincoln called as he let himself into her apartment. “Liv?”_

 _She stuck her head around the corner, eyebrows raised. “_ What? _” she demanded in exasperation, hair still wet from a shower._

 _“Listen to me. I need you to do two things,” he said firmly, taking her by the shoulders. “One, I need you to get rid of any line of communication the Secretary might have access to. Second, you have to pack a bag, and fast. We’re taking a road trip.”_

 _A frown spread across her face. “Lincoln, what’s going on? What about the Secretary? Where are we going?”_

 _“I’ll explain on the way. Just go; pack!” Lincoln ordered, pointing insistently to the bedroom, the rare stern quality to his voice making her hasten to do as he said._

 _She emerged from the bedroom a few minutes later, tossing him a full duffel bag. As she slung the bag of baby things she had collected so far over her shoulder, she met his raised eyebrows bravely. “I know when you’re serious,” she murmured softly. “And I don’t know how long this road trip is going to last.”_

 _Lincoln softened just long enough to squeeze her arm before relieving her of the baby bag. “Come on. We don’t have much time and Charlie’s waiting for us.”_

“And then? Where did you go? How did you get from _your_ apartment in another _universe_ to the Bishop house _here?_ ” Olivia demanded, knocking Peter’s hand away when he tried to reach for hers. “You can bait us all you like with the details but you know damn well all we care about is _how you got here_.”

“And why,” Peter murmured, folding his arms again reluctantly.

Broyles sighed, clasping his hands together as he leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Ms. Dunham. Just tell us how you did it.”

Olivia glanced down, the tips of her red hair lying across her chest. “I don’t know how we did it,” she murmured finally, her voice cracking.

No one spoke for a moment, expecting her to continue, before her double raised an eyebrow snidely. “You don’t _know_ how you did it? You don’t _know_ how you just happened to cross universes into our-” She stopped short for a second, jaw clenching. “-into the Bishops’ living room? What, did you walk through the magical wardrobe?” Her words were uncharacteristically short, sarcastic, and they cut even deeper into Peter’s self-loathing thoughts.

Tears brimmed in her eyes when she looked up again. “We meant to,” she admitted. “But we didn’t think it would work. It was a last ditch effort. We’ve been running from the Secretary for almost three weeks. Our options were running out. So… we went to the old Harvard lab, took everything we could stuff into our car and came here. Well- there, I mean.” Rubbing a hand across her forehead, she pursed her lips.

“The boys flashed their badges and claimed a gas leak to get the family out of the house so we could set up in the living room. I’d think it was a fluke, wishing too hard, fairy dust, maybe.” Olivia chuckled darkly, shaking her head. “But then again, hopping universes sort of runs in the family.” She smoothed down her shirt, catching Peter’s eye deliberately. “I had Charlie pump me full of the Cortexiphan we’d found – he’s good with needles, you know – and… then we were here.”

“Just like that.” Olivia’s voice was dry and disbelieving. “It doesn’t happen,” she paused to snap her fingers, “ _just like that_. I would know.”

“Well it did, all right? I don’t know how, but it did. And now we’re here and we’re asking for your help! I’m sorry for what I did, I really am, but I thought it was the right thing at the time. At least for the sake of this baby, can we put it behind us, just for the moment? You can lock me up, do whatever you like with me. But this isn’t my child’s fault and it isn’t Charlie or Lincoln’s either!”

Sighing, Broyles stood and motioned for the other two to follow him into the kitchen. “You understand our reluctance, Ms. Dunham. You’ll have to give us a moment.”

“I don’t know why we need a _moment_ ,” Olivia protested as soon as she was on the linoleum. “We shouldn’t believe a word she says.”

“Olivia.” Broyles’ voice was gentle but rebuking. “You’ve been her. You know her. And from what I remember from your debriefing, she wasn’t all around a terrible person.”

Clenching her jaw, Olivia squared her shoulders firmly. “We should take her in for questioning.”

“Liv, come on,” Peter admonished, sounding tired as he rubbed a hand over his face. “She might be faking something but she at least isn’t faking being pregnant.”

“So, what, pregnant women can’t be asked questions?” she demanded. “No, there is no reason to treat her any different than any other potentially violent suspect.”

“ _Violent?_ For god’s sake, she screwed me; she didn’t _shoot_ me!” Peter glared at her, crossing his arms to match hers. Olivia’s eyes widened in shock, her jaw dropping slightly. She fumbled for words, not sure how to respond to that.

He pursed his lips, starting to reach a hand out to her before changing his mind halfway. “I’m sorry. I just- maybe you should go back to the office. Question the others. I’ll handle her.”

Olivia stared at him a moment longer before yanking her coat off the hook by the door. “Maybe you’re right,” she ground out, not giving him a chance to stop her before she shut the door silently behind her. He sincerely wished she would have rattled it on its hinges; at least then he would know what she was thinking, feeling.

Liv walked in quietly from the living room, her hands clasped together. “Would it be possible for me to speak with Peter alone, just for a moment, sir? Ah, I mean, Agent Broyles?” Broyles pressed his lips together but nodded, stepping out onto the porch with a heavy sigh.

Glancing up at him, she bit her lip, one hand sliding over his only to have him flinch away. “No. No, you don’t get to be sorry and sad and win me over with your sense of humor. You nearly ruined my life. And you _did_ ruin the woman I love.”

She looked at the floor, shame blossoming pink on her cheeks. “I can’t even begin to make excuses for what I did, except that I thought it was the right thing. You may have _seen_ our world but you haven’t lived in it, haven’t seen the death and destruction or the fear in peoples’ eyes just to leave their houses. Peter, I’m sorry.”

“It’s not good enough,” he murmured, meeting her eyes reluctantly. “And now here you are, suddenly back in our lives, and claiming you’re pregnant with my child?”

“I’m not claiming it; it’s true. You’re going to be a father whether you like it or not. You can choose not to be a good dad but, for the record, what little I know about you? That’s not who you want to be.”

“No, you’re right, it isn’t, and if that baby is mine, I will stand by it. But I will not stand by you,” Peter said seriously.

She swallowed hard, looking down at her chipped nails. “I understand,” she murmured, shrugging a shoulder. “I guess I can’t really ask _anything_ of you.”

“No. You can’t.” Peter’s jaw was stern, not giving her an inch.

“Okay, then.” Liv cleared her throat, pushing her shoulders back bravely. “I guess I’m going in for questioning?”

“In the morning. You’ll stay here. No sense having two Olivias running around; too much room for trouble,” Peter said dryly. “There’s a spare bedroom upstairs. But, then, I believe you know your way around.”

She nodded slightly and started for the stairs but paused, her hand on the kitchen doorframe. “Thank you, Peter. The guys expected you to be far less hospitable. I’m glad they were wrong.”

Peter rubbed at his eyes, still trying to comprehend how his night had gone so very haywire. With a heavy sigh, he pulled open the freezer and dug into the strawberry ice cream.

 


	4. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

Bright and early the next morning, the guard Broyles had posted at Liv’s bedroom door took her, complete with dark glasses and a scarf to hide her hair, and Peter to the Fringe department. The handful of people in the office that knew she was coming stayed as far into the corners as possible, their skin crawling at the idea that she had been amongst them and they hadn’t known.

“They hate me, don’t they?” she whispered to Peter, keen intuition picking up on the eerie quiet that hung over the building.

“Do you blame them?” he answered tightly, letting her into interrogation with Broyles, before walking hesitantly into the observation room. Olivia didn’t turn when he entered so he sank into a chair silently, elbows on his knees and hands clasped.

He watched her grow more and more tense throughout the interview before abruptly rapping a knuckle against the glass. Broyles turned around slowly, lifting his eyebrows at her. “Will you excuse me a moment, Ms. Dunham?” he asked, clearing his throat as he stepped out. “Is something wrong?”

Olivia spun around as he came in. “The questions are unnecessary. Just get permission for a paternity test. And… Walter said he can test for IVF as well.”

“IVF?” Broyles glanced warily at Peter. “You think… they could have planned this?”

“I certainly wouldn’t put it past Walternate, would you?” She laughed humorlessly. “Funny. 20 years ago, IVF would have been fringe science.” She stepped past him, the door sliding shut behind her too quietly.

Peter ran his fingers through his hair, pausing a moment before jumping up and half-running after her. He followed her into the kitchen where she stood, silently stirring her coffee. Flipping the lock shut, he caught her arm, tugging at her until she looked at him. “ _What,_ Peter?”

“Don’t do this. Don’t go back into that shell of yours and shut me out. You think this isn’t eating me up, that having her here doesn’t make me want to cross universes and kill my own father?” His fingers tightened on her arm. “Olivia. I thought we had put what happened with her behind us.”

She smiled thinly, her eyes sad. “I’m not angry, Peter. I don’t think I know how to be angry, anymore.” Setting her coffee carefully on the counter, Olivia turned towards him, one hand on his chest. “I will always love you and I think you will always love me. And maybe, somewhere, in some universe,” she paused, quirking a smile at him, “we were supposed to be together. But I don’t think it’s this one.” She left him standing there, eyes stinging and her coffee slowly growing cold on the counter.

\---

They finally let Liv see Charlie and Lincoln an hour or so later as they were all being packed into an FBI van headed for New York and Walter. The threesome clung to one another as if it had been years, soft whispers shared between them, mild comforts and reassurances. The agents in the front seat had trouble keeping their eyes on the road with the fascinating interplay of secrets and tragedies in the rear view mirror.

When they finally arrived in New York several hours later, Liv was ushered quite hurriedly into a Massive Dynamics lab where Astrid, Nina and Walter waited impatiently. Astrid handed her a thin robe and motioned to the bathroom with one hand, barely looking at her. Liv sighed but followed the unspoken order, moving into the bathroom to change. When she reemerged, Nina had led all but Walter and Astrid into an adjoining office in an impotent attempt to give her some privacy.

Peter watched through the window, arms crossed, as they ran every test they could think of to prove her baby wasn’t his. The clock had ticked off nearly three hours before Astrid walked slowly into the crowded office, stripping her gloves off solemnly. “It’s his,” she murmured after a beat.

Olivia dropped her head into her hands with a huff, blond hair streaming through her fingers. “No. No, there’s some test you didn’t run. Walternate would not have let them get away if the child was naturally Peter’s!” she insisted, her voice even but her demeanor bordering on hysterical.

Shaking her head slightly, Astrid rested a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Olivia.” She glanced up at the younger Bishop, her eyes mournful. “Peter.” He stood with an almost blank expression on his face, still too shell-shocked by the whole concept he couldn’t quite manage to be surprised it was really true.

“ _No_. It can’t be _true_. We can’t let him play us again!” Olivia cried, slamming her hands down on the table. “Run the tests again!”

“This baby… is Peter’s,” Liv’s voice said firmly from the doorway, her hands clasped gently under her stomach. “You can run all the tests you like but you will never find anything different than that.”

“Get her out of here,” Olivia growled to no one in particular. “ _Run_ the _tests, again._ ”

Liv held up a hand, standing her ground. “Would you all give us a moment? I will submit to any test you want to run but only if I may speak with Agent Dunham alone.”

Peter swallowed hard but motioned to the silent crowd, Astrid, Nina, Broyles, Lincoln, Charlie… They all filed out one after the other, some more reluctant than others but all obedient. “What could you possibly have to say to me?” Olivia demanded, leaning heavily on the table.

“I had no idea what they would do to you,” Liv murmured without moving. “I thought I was doing the right thing for my country and my universe. I saw you as a threat, just as you see me as one now.”

“You stole my life, my home, the man I loved… Given the chance, you probably would have had my head. And I hate you for it, every bit of it. A little rationalizing and ‘putting me in your shoes’ isn’t going to change that.” Olivia stared her down for endless seconds, before her eyes dropped involuntarily to the evidence of Peter’s unwitting affair. “But,” she conceded, her voice softer. “I know he already loves the baby inside of you. He can’t help it; it’s one of the things I love about him.” A tiny smile crossed her face. “He has so much love bottled up in him and when he lets it out, he can’t ever just give a little bit. Peter’s an all or nothing sort of guy.”

Liv glanced down at her toes, biting her lip. “I came to see that,” she agreed quietly. “I am not going to try to apologize to you, Agent Dunham, because nothing could ever fix this. If I could, I would take back everything I did to you because it isn’t me he loved so fiercely and in every way but the physical, this baby is yours, not mine. It’s my flesh and blood but…” She looked up abruptly, meeting Olivia’s eyes. “Your spirit. When we conceived this… he was making love to you, not me.”

Olivia blinked in surprise, straightening slightly. “If only he had been,” she said finally as she opened the office door. “Astrid, Nina, get her some new clothes, please.” She walked out of the lab, her sensible shoes almost noiseless against the unforgiving tile floor. The door swung behind her with waning vigor, leaving a band of reluctant friends and foes staring after her empty space.

\---

Olivia practically lived at Massive Dynamics, her apartment in Boston coming to be less home than Nina’s office couch or a cot in one of Brandon’s labs. Every day she retreated further from Peter, desperate to avoid seeing him with _her_ , until finally he made a point of waking her up with a cup of coffee and a new file.

She blinked sleepily, lifting her head from someone’s borrowed desk, paperclips sticking to one cheek. Groaning, she brushed them off and reached for the file. “Thank you,” she murmured without meeting his eyes.

Peter’s hand slammed down on the file. “Ah, ah, ah… You don’t get to dismiss me this morning. I am holding your coffee hostage until you talk to me.”

Sighing, Olivia raised her eyes to his long enough to glare at him. “I don’t have time for this.”

“Well, then, no coffee. Your choice.” Peter started to stand, taking her cup with him, but was rewarded with a muffled grunt of despair. He raised an eyebrow. “Are you ready to negotiate for the release of your caffeine, then?”

Olivia pursed her lips but nodded. “Fine. What do you want?”

“I just want to talk. Hell, we can talk about that file if you want, so long as you’re acknowledging I’m in the room,” Peter admitted, still holding her cup just out of reach.

She hesitated but gave him a short jerk of her head before waving impatiently for her coffee. Peter handed it over slowly, sinking back into his chair. “So? What’s in the file?” she asked, closing her eyes in a brief moment of bliss as she took the first sip.

“There’s been some serious soft spot activity lately. Walter thinks it started about the time they crossed over. Maybe when they opened the door, they sent out some fractures. Wouldn’t be the first time.”

Olivia flipped through the folder, eyes skimming the pages that bore more of the same bad news she had had a steady stream of for far too long. “You ever think maybe that’s why they’re here? A desperate pregnant woman trying to protect her child is an excellent cover, don’t you think? It wouldn’t be the first time she sacrificed something in her life to be able to destroy ours.”

“How can you say that?” Peter demanded, a surge of irritation filling his voice, even as he tried to make peace with her. “You know, on some level, she’s just like you. Did _you_ ever think maybe Walternate chose to _let_ them get away, _let_ them cross over because he knew what the effect would be? Why do you always assume it’s her fault? I’m not condoning what she did to you but at some point you have to see she only did what she thought was right.”

She pursed her lips, hanging her head slightly. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I am trying. You _have_ to get how difficult this is for me. I wanted you and I to work so much, I can’t _stand_ it.”

Peter hesitated but stood slowly, stepping around the desk and spinning her chair to face him as his fingers brushed messy strands from her face. “I do get it,” he promised softly, wrapping one hand around the back of her neck and pressing a soft kiss into her hair. “Maybe we still will. Work, that is.”

“Let’s not pretend,” she whispered back, burying her face in his shoulder. “Hurts too much.”

“I still love you though.” Peter’s voice was muffled by her hair, soft and pressing.

Olivia pulled back slightly, fingers brushing over his cheek. “I still love you too.” Leaning in, she pressed a lingering kiss to his lips. “Sometimes it’s not enough.”

 

 

 


	5. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

Peter nursed a bottle of chocolate milk, thumb scraping back and forth over the edge of the wrapper, his arms resting on the top of a table in the Massive Dynamics cafeteria. He watched the clock intently and as soon as it hit 12:25 he stood, shrugged on his coat and headed for the exit, milk in hand.

“Can I talk to you? Excellent.” A deceptively slender arm slid through his and he glanced down at Liv’s red head with an internal groan. “You’ve been avoiding me.”

“I thought you always had lunch at 12:30,” Peter said calmly, still walking towards the door with her arm in his.

“Exactly my point. You know when I have lunch so you leave the cafeteria 5 minutes before. Don’t try to tell me that’s a coincidence.”

“It’s not. I’m avoiding you. Ach, you dragged it out of me!” Peter clutched his free hand to his chest briefly before dropping it to his side and adding dryly, “Now leave me alone.”

Liv stepped in front of him, her hands sliding onto his arms. “Peter. Please.”

He sighed heavily, nostrils flaring. “Look. So the baby’s mine. That I can deal with. Diapers, bottles,” he paused, holding up the glass one in his hand, “chocolate milk. But I _said_ I would not stand by _you_. I thought you understood that.”

Her shoulders sagged and she dropped her hands to her sides. “I do. I’m not going to try to make us a family or… It would be nonsense. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be involved now.” Liv sighed, turning to walk away but hesitating. “I have an ultrasound at 3:00 on the 42nd floor. Charlie and Lincoln will be there but… you’re welcome too.”

Peter watched her walk into the elevator, downing the last of his milk and chucking the bottle into the bin hard enough that it shattered. His satisfied smirk faded quickly as he glanced up at the closing doors, Liv still just visible between them.

“Come on, we have a case.” Olivia slapped a folder onto his chest as she walked by him. “I’ll meet you at the car.” He caught the file just before it slipped to the floor and hurried after her, the redhead momentarily forgotten.

Liv folded her hands quietly in front of her, watching the numbers above her head light up as the elevator rose one floor after another, stopping every few. She stepped off at the 18th, where Nina had set up living quarters for the three of them after a nearly disastrous incident with Charlie and his widow. Wincing at the two-week old memory, she rubbed at her forehead and pushed open the ‘apartment’ door.

Papers rustled around the corner and muffled male voices filtered in from the living room. Walking into the attached kitchen, Liv raised an eyebrow at Charlie and Lincoln sitting nonchalantly on the floor. “What’s under the couch?” she asked dryly. They never could hide anything from her.

Charlie sighed, reflexively punching Lincoln in the shoulder. “I _told_ you that was a dumb place.”

Pulling a jar of peanut butter out of the cabinet, she reached for a spoon. “If I could get down onto my knees, I would find out for myself. But I can’t. So what’s under the couch?” Liv repeated, thoroughly sucking on a spoonful of the creamy butter.

Lincoln pushed himself up and joined her in the kitchen, one hand sliding onto her waist and the other onto her arm. “Livy,” he murmured softly. “I don’t think you want to see this one. Don’t worry about it; it might even turn out to be nothing.”

She paused, glancing between them slowly. “Okay… and now you’re scaring me. What is it? Is it the Secretary?” Panic tinged the edges of her voice and Lincoln tightened his grip on her.

“No, no, it’s nothing like that. It’s just…”

“Now is not the time to be hiding things from me,” Liv insisted, tears stinging her eyes. “Please. I am paranoid and freaked out enough as it is.”

Charlie and Lincoln shared a brief argumentative exchange of eyebrows and glares before the former stood with a sigh, swiping a roll of paper from beneath the sofa and unrolling it onto the island counter. “Fine. We… think they may have a doomsday device.”

Liv recalled a time that would have made her laugh. _Flash Gordon, much?_ she would have teased. Now it only sent a cold chill of fear through her. “You can’t be serious.” She slowly dropped a hand to her stomach, a distant look in her eyes as she imagined just how much worse a world her baby might grow up in. “I-Is that Peter?” she asked finally, sliding the drawings and schematics closer to herself, not daring to ask where they had found them.

Lincoln ran a hand through his perfect hair with a sigh. “Yeah. We’re not sure if someone just has a sick sense of humor or… or if your boy has it out for us a little more than he’d have us believe.”

“The plans weren’t exactly lying around so we have to assume it’s serious. And that if anyone were to find out we have them, there would be serious consequences,” Charlie added, bracing his arms on the counter, his opinion of Peter evident.

“No. No, Peter may have his problems with us but this…” She reached out a hand, fingers gently stroking the face sketched before her. “This isn’t him. He wouldn’t- _couldn’t_ be so heartless. Besides, this probably isn’t even what it looks like. The two of you shouldn’t be out snooping around-”

Catching her arm in graceful fingers, Lincoln squeezed. “Liv, come on. You don’t really know him so well. And we all know he’d trade you for her in a heartbeat. What makes you think he sees your _world_ any differently?”

Liv sighed, resting her head on his shoulder reflexively. “Maybe we did the wrong thing, coming here,” she murmured.

“Hey. Don’t go there,” Charlie stepped around the counter, his arm sliding around her. “It’s too late to second-guess ourselves. We’re here and there’s going to be a baby and no matter what happens, that little bundle is going to be loved.” His voice dropped at the last as he pressed a kiss to the top of her head.

Lincoln pulled away to grab a mostly stale pizza from the fridge, dropping it on the counter with a loud smack. “It’s going to be okay, Livvy, I promise. We just have to play our cards right.”

Grabbing a piece of pizza and smothering it in peanut butter, Liv pouted slightly. “I’d say we have a pretty bad hand, wouldn’t you?”

The boys watched her with wrinkled noses and dropped their own pieces back in the box. Glancing up at them, she rolled her eyes. “Oh come on, peanut butter and pizza isn’t as bad as the other night with the smoothie fiasco.”

Pausing, they both nodded in agreement and dug into their thankfully peanut butter-free pepperoni.

Three o’clock saw them on the 42nd floor with Astrid, the only one in the building both cleared to conduct the ultrasound and that Liv didn’t _mind_ conducting it. (In her defense, the boys had both agreed Brandon would be creepy and there was no reason to subject her to Walter more than necessary.)

Astrid, on the other hand, wasn’t thrilled at the prospect. She barely acknowledged them as she typed in Liv’s information and washed her hands. “Lift your shirt please,” she murmured without meeting the other woman’s eyes.

“Wait. I-” Liv bit her lip, glancing up at the other two. “I’d like to wait for Peter.” Charlie’s jaw tightened, looking away disapprovingly.

“He’s coming?” Astrid questioned in surprise. “I thought he was out on a case in upstate with Olivia. To be honest… I don’t think he really _wants_ to be here.”

Liv’s face fell at the statement and she dropped her head with a sigh, lacking the comforting weight of Lincoln’s hand. Charlie and Lincoln exchanged another tense look and the latter sank onto the bed, tucking her hair behind her ear. “Hey, no, maybe he’ll find a way to be here. It’s okay; we can wait.”

“No, Agent Farnsworth is right. Let’s just do this,” Liv disagreed, sliding the lightweight fabric of her blouse up over her stomach.

Shaking the bottle of green ooze, Astrid eyed Charlie as she squeezed some onto her skin. Liv shivered at the cold contact and Lincoln slid an arm around her shoulders, subconsciously relishing the chance to step in for her as they both watched the little black screen beside them intently.

Olivia dropped Peter off in New York late the following night on her way home to the Boston Fringe division. It had been a particularly rough showdown with yet another bereaved taking advantage of the disintegrating physics, but Olivia still wouldn’t let her report sit unfinished, even if it meant driving all night to get back.

Peter had offered to help but she dropped him at the front door to Massive Dynamics as she had after the last three cases. “I don’t need to be here,” he had insisted, his voice soft. “Let me come back with you.”

“You _do_ need to be here. We can’t leave them alone.” Olivia had turned her face away from him, blond hair falling across her cheek.

He didn’t bother to argue that the three ‘other worlders’ were tucked safely on the 18th floor of perhaps the most heavily guarded skyscraper in New York. Instead, he only squeezed her hand and got out onto the streetlamp-lit sidewalk. “Night, Livia,” he murmured as she drove off, taillights blending in with the sea of others.

Walking into the building with his overnight bag over his shoulder, head hanging, Peter took the elevator straight to Walter’s lab and sank down at a computer without bothering to turn the lights on. The machine whirred to life and with a few practiced keystrokes he was looking at the one thing that had preoccupied him even through reanimated corpses and a serial killer in a wedding gown.

Peter gave a heavy sigh he’d been holding in since Liv first cornered him in the cafeteria two days earlier and sank back in his chair, swiveling slightly. “We’re gonna be great friends, you and I,” he murmured to the fuzzy black and white image on the screen. “We’re gonna play catch and go fishing and make model airplanes and…”

 


	6. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

Liv shifted beneath the sheets, her small hand resting on Charlie’s side as her eyes blinked open sleepily. “Why are you still awake?” she whispered accusingly, nestling closer.

He barely glanced up from the book propped on his knees, the cheap nightstand lamp glowing dimly beside them. Slowly stroking a hand over her hair, he shrugged and murmured distractedly, “Don’t know how you can sleep.”

Sighing softly, Liv tucked herself under his arm with a glance back to be sure she hadn’t disturbed the snoring Agent Lee. “It’s going to be okay,” she murmured, stroking her fingers over his scarred cheek. “What does he have to do to earn your trust?”

“I don’t know, Liv, not destroying my world would be good,” Charlie shot back dryly, eyes still glued to the pages of his book.

She groaned under her breath, flipping his book shut and tossing it on the nightstand. “Goddammit, Charlie,” she growled, her lips pursed. “When are you going to forgive me?”

Confusion crossed his face and he pulled her closer, a hand on her stomach. “Livvy, what do I have to forgive you for?” he asked slowly.

“Everything! Look around you; you’re stuck here because of me, out of your universe, probably doomed to some grisly end, no chance at love or white picket fences or-” Unshed tears choked her words and he wrapped his arms tightly around her.

“Shh, shh. Hey, don’t even go there. If I didn’t _want_ to be here, I wouldn’t be. You think I didn’t consider the consequences when I pumped you full of cortexiphan?” He tipped her chin up, thumb brushing damp cheeks. “Olivia. We would _both_ ,” he nodded seriously over her shoulder at Lincoln, “much rather meet a grisly end at your side than live in our own world without you any day.”

Liv swallowed her rare tears, resting her forehead on his. “Someday you’ll hate me for it.”

“Stop it. You’re just hormonal,” he teased, strands of red hair catching on his rough calluses.

She pinched his arm, smirking in spite of herself when he jerked away with a muffled laugh. They both jumped though when Lincoln rolled over with a groan of disgust. “You two better not start making out without me,” he groused, interrupted sleep roughening his voice.

Charlie chuckled, laying Liv down between them, Lincoln’s arm automatically sliding around her. “Why are we awake at two in the morning?” he asked with resignation, chin resting on her shoulder.

“Because the world is ending and this is the only chance at love we get,” Liv murmured back, pointedly tangling each hand with one of theirs and letting her eyes drift shut.

It was without her approval and stomachs in knots that they found themselves putting their ragged trust in Peter to the test a week or two later.

 “Do you _realize_ what they could do to us for this?” Lincoln hissed, poking his head around a dark corner in the bowels of Massive Dynamics.

“Do you _realize_ what they could do to us with _this?_ ” Charlie shot back, shaking the blueprints at him.

Lincoln sighed, shoulders sagging as he stepped into the empty hallway. “Maybe it’s not what we think it is,” he murmured, almost under his breath.

Scoffing, Charlie shook his head, jaw set. “Liv’s been filling your head with her lovesick nonsense,” he remarked harshly. Badly restrained hurt crossed the other agent’s face for, Charlie knew, more than one reason. His brow knit as he clasped a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, man, I didn’t mean that.”

Grinding his teeth, Lincoln waved a hand at him and pressed his ear to the door that was their destination. “Just… shhh,” he said with an irritated beat, pressing the plastic wrap fingerprint Liv had reluctantly made for them on to the scanner. The light turned green, recognizing the imprint as ‘Dunham, Olivia’ and the lock unlatched beckoningly.

They shared a glance, both silently asking the question that was all too loud in their heads: do we even want to know? Their curiosity and desire to protect the few things they loved overrode their fear and Lincoln nudged the door open slowly. The room was dark but blue electronic lights shone on exactly what they had prayed not to find.

Charlie swallowed hard and unrolled the blueprints in his hands, glancing between the drawing there, the matching machine in front of them and then at Lincoln. His sigh was resigned and shaky and he pressed his lips together before murmuring softly, “Well, shit.”

Lincoln slammed his eyes shut, shaking his head. “No. No, no, no. We’re more advanced than they are. How can they have something like this? No, it’s not possible. No…”

Dropping the schematics onto a nearby desk, Charlie reached for him, only one hand on his shoulder before Lincoln was curling into him, fingers clenching in the back of his shirt and his head buried in the crook of his neck. “She’s gonna die, isn’t she?” he whispered bitterly. “We’re going to lose her because she would never let something like this go down without her standing in the way.”

Charlie choked back his own emotion and tangled his fingers in Lincoln’s spiky hair. “Yeah, well, _she_ won’t go down without us,” he promised roughly.

Wrapped up in their own horror as they were, they barely noticed when the overhead fluorescents flickered on but there was no mistaking they were found out when a woman’s voice startled them from behind. “Just what exactly do you boys think you’re doing in here?”

They sprang apart, Lincoln wiping a hand over his face and Charlie tensing for a fight, to find Nina Sharp standing in the doorway, a hand on the frame and an eyebrow arched pointedly. “Lincoln, Charlie,” she drawled disapprovingly. “I think you better come with me.”

Liv stepped slowly out from behind her, apologies written all over her face which she vocalized when the instant betrayal registered on their faces. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she murmured, hurrying to them, her hands sliding onto Lincoln’s cheek, Charlie’s arm.

Folding her arms, Nina stepped into the cold room, the heavy metal door sliding shut behind her as she observed the tense dance and rituals the three exchanged.

“ _Liv_ ,” Lincoln whispered, his fear of seconds earlier giving way to hurt and the broken-hearted puppy dog he so often sported around her. “Liv, it’s real. They’ve really got it.”

“I didn’t want security to drag you in; better they heard it from me-” Before she could finish her sentence (let alone her apologies) a metal chair skittered across the concrete floor towards the machine, clipping Liv as it passed.

She stumbled forward into his arms, brow furrowing as she looked after the sudden movement. “What the…” The color drained out of her face as she finally realized what he had been trying to say, finally noticed the machine and its moving arms. “…hell… Oh god…”

Lincoln’s arms slid around her protectively, his lips brushing her forehead and his eyes closing in an attempt to unsee the waking nightmares playing in his head. But Charlie watched _Nina’s_ face over their shoulders, saw the confusion and buried terror she expressed in suddenly taut posture and clenched jaw. “You’re not doing this, are you? You don’t know _what’s_ controlling it,” he asked, his voice quiet, bordering on gentle.

Nina’s gaze shot to him and she pressed her lips more firmly together. “You _all_ need to come with me. _Right. Now._ ” Her voice was strained but as composed as ever.

Blinking fiercely, Liv fought to hold in the fright so obvious in her eyes as she brought her hands up to cover her face. Lincoln might have just led her upstairs to hear their punishment but her fingers came away bloody and shaking, a drop of blood clinging to the skin beneath her nose. “Lincoln…” she murmured, turning even a shade paler. “I don’t feel well…” He caught her halfway in her crumple to the floor.

“ _You_ had no right to hide this from us!” “ _You_ had no reason to know!” “Don’t give me that shit; we’re refugees, not prisoners.” “Refugees, my ass! I’m still not entirely convinced you aren’t spies!”

Liv woke on one of the lab tables to shouting and a splitting headache. She groaned and moved to push herself up but a hand on her shoulder only shoved her back down again. Brandon appeared in her line of sight with a warning look. “Just stay right where you are. You don’t want to get between them right now anyways.” He handed her a glass of water, if only to momentarily distract her from the tubes and cords and electrodes attached to her arms for yet another round of tests, this time to divine her or her child’s connection to the machine. It would seem her fainting spell was less hormonal than affected by the ever-mysterious device in the far depths of Massive Dynamics.

She sipped gratefully at the water though and turned her attention to observing the nearly bloody turn of events across the room. Charlie and Lincoln stood on one side, arms folded with Colonel Broyles stances if she’d ever seen one. If they brought a brief smile to her face, the opposition only made her headache ten times worse. Peter held Olivia by the arms, pulling her back away from them, her fists clenched as though if he weren’t there, she really might have decked them both. She couldn’t hear his whispered words but there was an intimacy in the way he tugged her back against his chest, held her firmly until she listened to him, that she had never witnessed Peter share with anyone else. Certainly not herself.

He flexed his fingers on her upper arms, holding her tightly so she could only escape if truly so inclined. “Calm down, Olivia,” he murmured, throwing a glance at Nina and Walter and Broyles in the office.

“They _stole_ the _blueprints_ ,” she shot back, hands still curled defensively.

“Think about the first time _you_ saw them,” Peter countered quickly, his voice hushed in her ear as he wrapped one arm around her waist and slid the other over her chest, fingers catching on her collarbone. “Think about how scared you were. Then think about how they must be feeling.”

Olivia slowly, consciously, quieted her breathing, kept her breast from heaving under his hands. “Fine,” she muttered finally, fingers drumming against his. “Fine.” She pulled away from him, her characteristic composure creeping back into stiff posture. “I have some leads to follow up on at the office. Call me when the tests are in.”

Peter reached for her but she slipped through his fingers, grabbing her coat as she walked silently out the door yet again. He heaved a sigh, rubbing tiredly at his forehead. A familiar voice across the room startled him from his sulk. “You really got the short end in this, didn’t you?” Liv asked, feet swinging as she sat on the lab table, an eyebrow raised at him.

“Excuse me?”

“Well… you don’t want anything to do with me and all _she_ wants to do is punish you when it seems to me you’ve suffered as much as either of us. Maybe both of us.” Liv shrugged a shoulder, almost shyly.

Peter blinked, mulling that over a moment as Charlie handed her a refilled glass of water. “She’s gotten insightful,” he teased gently, hand squeezing her knee.

Lifting himself onto the table beside her, Lincoln pressed a confident kiss to her temple. “I think it’s the hormones,” he added, grinning as he narrowly avoided an elbow in his ribs.

She took a sip from her glass before nodding to the door. “Well, go on.”

Peter let a small grin tug at the corners of his mouth despite everything and snatched his coat off the rack by the door, but turned back, marching up to the table again. “Just for the record,” he said as though to clarify, then caught her chin in his hand and kissed her firmly. Liv smiled softly when he pulled away, her heart a little lighter as the lab door swung shut with a bang behind him.

She was unlocking the SUV when Peter finally caught up to her. “Olivia! Olivia, wait.” He stopped short a few feet away, hands in the pockets of his peacoat.

“No! Peter…” Olivia turned on her toe, keys dangling from one hand. “Just _let_ me be miserable.”

Peter’s jaw clenched, his hands fisting in his pockets. “And if I refuse?” he asked petulantly.

“You don’t _get_ to refuse. I’m not _blaming_ you for what’s happened but you should be taking some responsibility anyway.” Olivia’s fingers curled around the door handle but not before his wrapped firmly around her wrist.

“I’ve taken the _brunt_ of the responsibility,” Peter argued, his voice low and steady. “And if it’s what you really want I will continue to avoid her in the halls, skip important moments in the growth of my child and _still_ not get to come home to you every night. But if there is any doubt in your mind that you want to ruin us both? Now would be the time to concede.”

Olivia swallowed hard, tongue darting out across her lips nervously. She glanced away, drawing a shaky breath, searching uselessly for words. “I- Ah-”

“That’s what I thought.” Peter pushed her up against the cold, black fiberglass, his hand resting familiarly at the sweep of her neck, lips hovering over hers.

She held his rather intense gaze for a beat and then another and then her hands were on his cheeks, two-day stubble scratching at her palms, even the jingle of the keys dangling from her fingers not enough to distract her from kissing him fiercely. Peter moaned softly against her lips, one hand sliding down her waist, scrambling for the door handle. He wrenched it open, the edge digging into her back and earning him an annoyed grunt even as she tugged him into the back seat with her, hands hooked under his lapels.

Peter shoved the armrests up impatiently, slamming the door behind them as she hurriedly stripped off her coat, fingers fumbling over the buttons on her blazer. She was reminded exactly how nimble he was when he managed to get out of his peacoat, untuck his shirt and divest her of her belt in the same amount of time it took her to shed the black jacket – and even do it more elegantly.

A half-smile drifted across her lips and she pressed her hands to his cheeks again, lips brushing his, her tongue darting out temptingly. “God, I’ve missed you,” she murmured, the words soft and genuine.

His grin spread quickly and infectiously to his eyes, the corners crinkling as he ducked his head to drag kisses across her jaw and throat. “Good,” he whispered back, glancing up at her from the ‘v’ in her blouse as he slowly popped open each button.

Olivia rolled her eyes, her half-smile widening in spite of herself as she let her hands drift to his waistband, dexterity returning so she could unhook his belt and slide her hands into his open slacks. He responded with a very intelligent groan, nose buried between her breasts. “Missed you too,” he agreed suggestively, tugging her pants off when he felt her chuckle.

Wrapping her arms around his neck, she let him tug her thigh up over his hip and caught him in a deep, heady kiss. She pushed her tongue in his mouth without apology even as he sank into her, nearly taking her breath away having waited so long to feel him again. Olivia tipped her head back with a moan when he slipped a hand between them, the other sliding up her spine beneath the undone blouse. She hissed a ‘yes’, toes curling as her legs tightened around him.

Pushing himself up, he ignored the vibration of his phone in his back pocket, fully aware Olivia could hear the buzzing even over their heavy breathing. She kissed him soundly, fingers playing against his cheek, her back arching pleasurably. “Ohh, Peter…” she moaned, one hand tangling in his hair. “ _Yes…_ ”

His phone had barely stopped buzzing when hers rang, somewhere under the seat. Peter stilled slightly, fingers pressing perhaps overly hard into her skin. “Don’t you dare get that,” he growled, lips brushing over her pulse point. “Not now, Livia.”

But she fumbled for it anyway, still tight and desperate on him but distracted as she grabbed the phone. “It’s Broyles,” she murmured, hooking her free arm around his neck for balance as she answered the call. “Hello, sir.”

Peter made his annoyance clear, nipping at her shoulder even as he continued stroking, caressing, worshipping her, some masochistic part of him wanting to give them away, wanting the whole world, the very serious Colonel Broyles included, to know she had at least temporarily waived her disgust with him. Olivia retaliated with short, sharp nails pressed into the back of his neck but stilled suddenly, obviously reacting to whatever she was hearing. She made a few sounds of agreement before murmuring her thanks. “Yes, I haven’t actually left yet. We will be right there, sir. Thank you, sir.”

He brushed his fingers over her temple in concern as she hung the phone up, hand wrapping anxiously around it. “What is it?” he asked softly, worry furrowing his brow.

A distant look in her eyes seemed to pull her thoughts away from him for a moment but when she returned, she stared at him with a mix of fear and helplessness. “It’s the Secretary. Peter… your father’s here.”

 


	7. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

“What do you mean he’s here?” Peter’s voice roared through the already bustling, frantic lab as he burst through the swinging doors, Olivia close on his heels, already on her cell, fielding calls from Boston and sweeping a hand through uncharacteristically mussed hair.

“ _Faux_ livia brought him,” Walter growled, stabbing a crooked finger in her direction without glancing up from the elaborate computer screen in front of him.

Spinning on his heel, Peter faced her, eyes narrowed and normally graceful elegant hands clenched into furious fists. “Was I wrong to trust you, Liv?” he inquired, stepping into her personal space as she sat still and tense on the edge of the lab table, the tension between them painfully different than it had been just early that evening.

Liv scoffed irritably. “No. No, of course not! Why would I want him here?”

“I don’t know. But he did send you here in the first place.” His words were even, but she could see Olivia fixing her blazer out of the corner of her eye and wondered if the boys had been right, if Peter really gave a damn about her and their baby.

“He tried to _control_ me, tried to control my _child_.” Liv started to shove him away but his fingers wrapped tightly around her arms.

“Don’t try and play games with me.” Peter’s voice dropped a dangerous octave-and-a-half and he leaned in closer, breath warm on her cheek. “You may have stolen her life, but you _invaded_ mine. And we both know you did it all for _him_. I’d hate to think you fooled me twice.”

“I did it for Lincoln and Charlie and my mom and all the people we’ve lost. I couldn’t care less about the Secretary. Don’t presume to understand me just because we’ve fu-” Liv shot back venomously, cutting off as his fingers tightened on her arms again.

“Just _answer_ the _question:_ was I wrong… to trust you?”

Liv held his eyes for several long heartbeats. To her credit, she didn’t look away in shame as she answered in the affirmative. Dropping his hands in disgust, Peter stepped away from her as though she’d punched him in the gut but before he could say anything she added, “But not for the reasons you think.”

“It doesn’t matter why. One way or another, I let you use me again.” Peter walked away despite her protests, the door swinging behind him again as he wandered mindlessly down the hall.

The catch of a hand on his arm had him turning back but a curled fist sent him stumbling into the stark white wall. Peter clutched his jaw with a groan, glaring up at Lincoln. “Something I did to _offend_ you, Lee?”

“You don’t get to talk to her like that. And you don’t _ever_ touch her like that,” Lincoln stated, the words firm, confident and not a small bit threatening.

Peter straightened, dabbing at a drop of blood on his lip. “Look, I get that you love her. But _I_ love _Olivia_ and I will do what it takes to protect her.”

Reaching out, Lincoln hauled him up by his lapel. “Don’t give me that crap. You know as well as I do you can’t love one and not the other, not really. They’re two sides of the same coin and all that… _nonsense._ The only people who really believe you don’t love them both are _you_ and _Liv_ and believe me when I say it’s breaking her down.” He dropped Peter abruptly, leaving him there, slumped against the wall with useless denial in his eyes.

He could hear the soft tick-tock of his watch hands as he lay there, keenly aware of the growing bruise on his jaw, several long minutes slipping away from him before he pushed himself up with a groan. Pausing at the vending machine in the hall for red licorice, Peter made his way quietly back into the lab and sat on the gurney beside Liv. “You don’t have to talk; just listen, all right?”

Liv’s tongue darted out across her lips irritably but she nodded, hands folded in her lap.

“If you want me and everyone else here to really and truly believe you’re on our side, you’re going to have to give us the whole story. If, however, you would rather retain your loyalties to Over There and Walternate… I won’t stop you. The FBI will no longer protect you and you’ll be out on your own, but I will make certain none of you get hurt on my account,” he murmured, voice even and calm before holding out the small bag of candy. “Red vine?”

She slid one out, biting off the end before pursing her lips. “I’m not on your side. But I’m not on his either. You have to understand how difficult it is. My family, the people I love, are all over there, all of my memories. But this baby deserves to grow up in a world where… where farm animals aren’t extinct and Boston is a family vacation.” Liv glanced up to meet his eyes and found more understanding there than she had expected.

“I _do_ get it,” he murmured hesitantly, his voice reluctant but sincere. “I have a life here and a biological family there. I had to choose between the mother I’d lost and the woman I could lose. Whatever you decide, Liv…” Peter reached out a hand to cup her cheek, pressing his lips against the other in a chaste kiss. “I don’t have any right to stop you.”

He left her sitting there as he joined the buzz of science jargon and panicked FBI agents, his packet of Red Vines torn open on the gurney in his place. Whether it was his gesture of good will or her own conscience, even Liv was never quite sure but she pulled Agent Broyles aside a few minutes later and changed the universe with one simple confession.

“I know why he’s here.”

Five words got her an _audience_ of five in Nina’s office, the next best thing to an interrogation room at Massive Dynamics. Liv rested her elbows on each arm of her chair, facing Nina, Walter, Broyles, Olivia and Peter. “I’m not stupid. I want to know all four of us will remain protected,” she insisted, one hand resting on her stomach pointedly.

“We can’t _guarantee_ anything,” Olivia shot back, fists resting on the desk as she leaned towards her double.

Broyles rested a hand on her arm until she pulled back, jaw clenched. “We certainly have no intentions of handing anyone over to… _Walternate_ … if that’s what you mean. And I don’t plan to let you out of FBI control. Please, Ms. Dunham. He must be here for a reason so it’s doubtful we have much time.”

Temporarily satisfied, she took a deep breath. “You know that I came here originally with the mission of spying but you’re also aware of my goal to search for the scattered pieces of the machine?” She received nods all around so pressed on. “Well, I was successful on almost all accounts, except we missed something. There is one small part that wasn’t included in my mission. I honestly don’t believe anyone realized it was missing until after I had returned but I guess the whole thing doesn’t quite work properly without it.”

“So he’s here to search for the missing part,” Walter murmured, hands nervously clenching and unclenching at his sides. “Which piece is it?”

Liv pulled a small scrap of paper from her pocket and smoothed it out on the desk. The picture was drawn in pencil and covered in creased lines but Walter seemed to recognize it. “I would have spoken up sooner but I had hoped… vainly, I guess, that it wouldn’t be necessary.”

“Well then there’s only one thing for us to do.” Five pairs of inquiring eyes turned to look at Peter. “We have to put as much distance between that part and the rest of the machine as possible.”

It was a simple plan really: dismantle the small part from the machine, pile into a decidedly non-FBI issue van and run like hell.

Less than 24 hours later, Peter leaned his hands against the 18th floor window, head spinning slightly as he looked down to the sidewalk below.

The door opened behind him and Lincoln reflexively reached for his gun at the sight of an intruder. “Something I can help you with, _Bishop?_ ” Lincoln sneered, hands falling away to his sides as he realized his gun hadn’t been on him in weeks.

Glancing over his shoulder finally, Peter chewed on the inside of his cheek. “If you love her so much, why convince me I love her too?”

Lincoln swallowed hard, his shoulders slumping as he reached into the cupboard for a hoarded bottle of bourbon, though he probably should have been packing what meager belongings he’d accumulated instead. “Because apparently unlike you, I _want_ her to be happy. With or without me.”

“That’s not fair,” Peter murmured, gratefully taking the proffered glass.

“Isn’t it? You’ve brought your Olivia _and_ mine nothing but trouble.”

“Well.” Peter sipped at the cheap, pungent alcohol. “ _That’s_ fair. Doesn’t mean if I had the chance, I wouldn’t run away with her, take her wherever she wanted to go, just run away from my father and a mirror image of herself and nearly dying every other day…”

“Question is, which of them do you mean? Would you rather desert the woman you love or your child?” Lincoln raised a judgmental eyebrow.

“Is that really what you think of me?” Peter demanded, slamming his glass down. “I didn’t ask for this pregnancy, you know, but I am going to stand by my son if it kills me!”

“You-” Lincoln stopped, glass halfway to his mouth. “How do you know it’s a boy?”

Peter stumbled over an excuse before sighing heavily, fingers rubbing at his forehead. He pulled his wallet from the inside pocket of his coat draped over a chair, sliding a fuzzy ultrasound photograph onto the counter. Picking it up, Lincoln felt his brow knit in confusion. “But… you weren’t there.”

“Doesn’t mean I don’t care,” Peter chided softly. “I _would_ like to be the father I never had, you know. I’m not a monster, Lincoln. And I wasn’t raised by him.”

“I don’t think you’re him,” Lincoln half-growled under his breath, eyes still glued to the small gray image of Liv’s baby.

“Yes you do. You’re caught between jealous of me and hating me.” A humorless smirk tugged at his lips as he swung his coat over his arm. “Ought to make for a real blast of a road trip,” he said, voice dry with sarcasm as he let himself out before Lincoln could argue.

Across town, Olivia sighed softly, opting for a slew of black and grey t-shirts, slacks and jeans from her hotel closet. Her hands stilled as she folded a pair and laid it in a practical duffel bag on the bed, shoulders slumping slightly.

“You almost ready?” Peter called gruffly from the hall, hand catching on the doorframe as he swung into the room. Intuitively picking up on her less-than-perfect posture, he willed a moment of calm on himself and slipped his arms around her from behind, cheek pressed gently against hers.

She stood there silently, gratefully, for a few moments before tipping her head back onto his shoulder, murmuring, “I miss you.”

Peter smiled, although he was certain it wasn’t funny, lips brushing her ear. “What do you mean?” he whispered back.

“I just…” Olivia paused and he thought she might not answer. “I’ve just been thinking a lot lately. I know I hated it but I just really want to be back in Iraq, listening to you call me ‘sweetheart’. Think Walter could whip me up a time loop so I’d never have to leave?”

Chuckling bitterly, he pressed hot kisses across her jaw. “I can call you ‘sweetheart’. And we can run to Iraq if you want, but I think I’d prefer somewhere you can be half-naked on occasion,” Peter teased, his voice dark but sincere.

“This isn’t going to end well, you know. Someone’s going to die and it’s going to be your fault,” Olivia murmured, eyes closed as she rested in the crook of his neck, her hands covering his on her waist.

Peter blinked in surprise, stammering slightly. “Wh-”

“It will be my fault too,” she conceded after a beat. “And Walter’s. Definitely Liv’s. It always comes back to you though, Peter. I wish it wasn’t that way. I wish I could take your place all those years ago, be the one that shouldn’t have been.”

He curled his arms tighter around her, eyes slamming shut. “Don’t you dare talk like that. You are _always_ supposed to be,” he whispered, lips brushing her ear.

Olivia cleared her throat, pulling away from him, one hand pressed flat against his chest. “We don’t have a lot of time. You should go pack.”

“I’ve already packed.” Peter reached for her again, smoothing blond hair behind her ear, his eyebrows knit together in worry.

“Well, then, what about the van? Shouldn’t you be, I don’t know, checking the oil or the tires or something?”

“Why shouldn’t I be right here, with you? I thought we were past this, Livia,” Peter sighed, hands dropping to rest awkwardly on her arms.

“We were. We _are_. But we can’t _do_ this.” Olivia stepped away, putting the bed between them. “I don’t like her. But doesn’t it feel wrong to kiss me and know a few miles away she’s thinking about you? I can’t hurt her like that, not when I know exactly how she feels.”

Peter’s shoulders sagged and he shook his head slightly, chin dropping to his chest. “I should have known you would do anything to be unhappy.”

In her defense, she did look offended but before she could protest, he walked around the bed and took her face in his hands. “When you’re ready, even if it’s fifty years from now or the world has ended or I’m married or _anything_ , I love you.” He pressed a soft kiss to her lips, pulling away even as she nearly gave into him there and then. “We’re meeting at Massive Dynamics in 20.”

Twenty(- _four_ )minutes later, Peter, Olivia, Walter, Astrid, Liv, Charlie and Lincoln piled seven duffel bags and one very sensitive briefcase into the back of a rather inconspicuously beat-up 1980s panel van and pulled away into the bright lights of a New York evening.

“Are we doing the right thing?” Broyles asked in that quiet, gentle way of his as the metal doors rolled back down behind the disappearing van.

Nina pressed her lips together with a small, noncommittal shrug. “Depends.”

“On what?”

“On _them_. It’s all on _them_ now, Phillip. Why don’t you pay your kids a visit before the world ends, hmm?”


	8. Chapter 7

The car was silent for all of about the first five minutes. The following twenty Walter insisted on noisily snacking on nearly everything in the small cooler Astrid had packed. The following four hours after _that_ , he pestered them with car games until he even put himself to sleep, leaving only Peter and Olivia awake in the front seats.

“Pull out the map, would you? I want to make sure we get on the westbound freeway, not the southbound,” he murmured quietly, one hand on the wheel as he glanced up at the pile of sleeping bodies in the back.

Olivia popped open the glove compartment and rustled around, unfolding a faded map of the East coast. “I didn’t mean to blame you, earlier.” Her brow knit, lips pursing, drawing her finger along the boldly defined freeway on the map.

He didn’t answer at first but she watched pain and yearning flicker over his features, even in the dimly lit car. “I know.”

She waited until they were safely on the correct road before tucking the map away and reaching for his free hand, sparing a tentative glance at Liv. “I love you, too. And I want you. Someday.”

“Some universe.” A humorless smile tugged at his lips, not even pretending to reach his eyes as he squeezed her hand.

The digital clock on the dash read 2:13 in glaring blue numbers when Charlie shifted in the backseat, jerking awake from some unpleasant dream (or possibly arachnids in his veins.) Eyes blinking open, he glanced down at Liv and gently pried his arm out from between her and Lincoln. “Where are we?” he asked in a quiet murmur, leaning forward, one hand resting on the back of Olivia’s seat.

“Somewhere around the Pennsylvania border,” she murmured back, voice bleary with sleep. “We doubled around in a big circle, I think.”

“We’re going to be dizzy by the time this is all over with but hopefully it will make us harder to track.” Peter met his eyes in the rear view mirror. “Pretty much assuming Walternate has his goons on us by morning.”

“It’s probably a safe bet.” Charlie sighed softly, glancing over his shoulder at Liv, his free hand sliding over to squeeze her knee. “If he hurts her…” The last was practically under his breath so Peter and Olivia pretended not to have heard. Better to remain ignorant of the tensions between their three otherworldly companions than to get swept up in them. Easier, anyway.

Though they had no way of knowing if Walternate’s intel was following them yet, by the time daylight did roll around they had gone in enough circles to be definitively _lost_. The blue-haired waitress at _Jeb’s Place_ assured them they were still in Pennsylvania and that the museum down the road was a must-hit for tourists. Olivia silently wondered how she could have thought them tourists, what with the tendency towards all-black and over shoulder glances. _Liv_ mentally labeled them more as a cult than tourists. But they both nodded politely to the waitress and buried their sarcasm in large cups of coffee.

“Oh, yes, let’s! What is a road trip without kitschy mid-century pitstops?” Walter cried, clapping his hands together until Astrid slowly tugged them back down to his lap, silently reminding him they were on the run not on a road trip.

Unsurprisingly, Peter hustled them all back into the car without a trip to the museum, finding his way back to the freeway even without the map this time. “Next time we stop we need to not be so conspicuous. A group this size is noticeable enough, without-”

Olivia cleared her throat before he could say anything to get Walter riled up. “Perhaps we should go to two separate places next time,” she murmured, thumbing through the car manual mindlessly.

“Or better yet, why don’t we scare up another car and go in two different directions?” Lincoln suggested, a sort of bitter sarcasm tingeing his words.

“Now, now, you guys, knock it off. We’ve got too far to go to start bickering already.” Liv sighed heavily, rubbing a hand across her forehead.

The grouchy silence that hung over the car for a brief moment was punctuated by the sound of a lid popping open in the back seat before Astrid leaned around to Liv, two white pills in the palm of her hand. “Aspirin?” she offered softly.

Liv glanced up at her, the tiniest hint of relief crossing her face with a smile. “Thanks, Farnsworth.” She threw her head back, dry-swallowing the pills, before leaning her head on Lincoln’s shoulder, his lips brushing her hair.

Radio intermittently cut with static was the only noise that disturbed the awkward quiet for a few painfully long hours but slowly, one after the other, each of the occupants trained to notice such things began to realize that the silver Kia behind them had kept close on their heels despite Peter’s numerous, if subtle, attempts to shake it.

“So who plans to mention the tail first?” Lincoln finally piped up, watching the silver car in the rear view mirror. Liv pressed her lips together quietly, glancing between her folded hands and Peter’s profile expectantly.

“You, apparently,” Peter murmured, hand clenching around the stick as he met the other man’s eyes in the reflection.

“Do you have a _plan_ as to what we’re going to do about him?” Lincoln pressed, ignoring the almost-gentle press of Liv’s fingernails in his thigh.

Peter jerked the wheel, turning the car into the next lane in another vain attempt to lose their shadow, if only to petulantly toss Lincoln around the backseat before growing serious. “That depends on how violent we’re willing to let this little mission of ours get.”

“ _We’re_ willing to go as far as necessary to protect that which we swore to protect.” Charlie’s sure, even voice added to the tense conversation, one hand smacking Lincoln’s arm as hard as Liv had pinched his leg.

Shooting Olivia a sidelong glance, Peter arched an eyebrow, proposing two unappetizing possibilities. “Olivia? Astrid? What are your votes? Do we leave a dead man on the side of the road or do we drive until we run out of gas?”

Olivia twisted in her seat, carefully meeting the eyes of each of her fellow travelers to judge perhaps the strength of their wills, perhaps the strength of their stomachs. “This is not the time for mercy. No doubt the driver is a shapeshifter. I do believe,” she turned to Peter, hands wrapped firmly around the arm of her chair, “you have some experience _disabling_ them.”

“No- No, Peter, please, not again…” Astrid gently hushed Walter’s protests at the very back of the van, her murmured reassurances lost on the others.

Olivia only calmly settled back, hands clasped in her lap. “It’s settled then.”

The strain and knowledge of the violent evening that lay ahead of them weighed on each differently – but equally.

Despite Walter’s muttered arguments, Peter took an exit off the highway sometime around twilight, the unimaginable grayness tinged with fog. The Kia boldly followed, not bothering to mask its intent as they led it deep into the Ohio farmland.

Ten minutes after the last five barns they had spotted along the road were dilapidated and abandoned, Peter pulled off the road, the Kia’s headlights casting eerie shadows over the van’s inner contours as it followed suit. “Anybody got a knife?” Peter asked, voice hushed and filled with a forced calm.

Charlie produced a folded switchblade from his jacket, pressing it silently into Peter’s waiting palm. He slipped out of the car, Olivia right behind him, her handgun poised. “Put your hands up!” Her flashlight darted over the shapeshifter’s face, already out of the car, his own weapon at the ready.

The man laughed humorlessly. “Right. Put that thing down before you hurt somebody,” he condescended, taking a step closer.

Obviously, he wasn’t expecting the bullet that ripped through his shoulder, almost before he was finished speaking. The shapeshifter hissed in disbelief, the gun slipping from his fingers as the muscles in his arm cramped up.

Peter kicked the gun away with the toe of his boot, a whisper of steel slicing the chilled, night air as he flicked open the switchblade. He stepped in close, intent on driving the knife deep into his opponent to remove the data chip that could give them all away even if they left him for dead on the side of this abandoned stretch of road in the middle of godforsaken nowhere.

He was far too trusting.

The shapeshifter caught Peter’s wrist with his good hand, twisting him around and pressing the blade against his throat. “All right, Agent Dunham. No more games. The rest of you are free to go if you hand over the missing part and Captain Lee and his team. Unless you’d like to get intimate with your boyfriend’s insides.”

Obviously, he wasn’t expecting the bullet that ripped through his skull, almost before he was finished speaking. Olivia’s eyes widened and she spun around, gun still held high defensively before she realized it was Charlie that stood behind her. “You can never have too much backup,” he murmured, slowly lowering his weapon.

Peter grunted, pushing the limp shapeshifter off of him. The sickening crunch of bone and flesh as he sunk the blade in made even the hardened Fringe agents flinch.

Olivia formed an almost silent, “Thank you,” as she holstered her gun, Charlie’s gentle squeeze of her arm the first time she let herself think of him as the man she had once trusted and cared for.

They didn’t stop again until pitch black had given way to hazy pink yet again, Olivia taking a turn at the wheel while Peter slept off his latest brush with death. An all-night Super 8 gave them three rooms, no questions asked, for their first few hours of sleep in beds rather than sitting upright.

Liv stopped Peter as he limped towards his door, Walter already passed out on top of his bed inside. “Hey. Are you all right?” she asked softly, fingertips brushing the back of his hand.

“No, not really.” Peter grinned weakly. “But I’ll be fine to move on in a few hours.” She must not have looked particularly convinced because he pressed a hand to her stomach, searching for the fluttering of his child’s kick. “I’ll be _fine_ ,” he repeated.

They stood there several long moments before she pushed up onto her tiptoes, brushing a hurried kiss against his cheek. “If you say so.” Liv stepped around him, disappearing into her room, two doors down.

Peter cleared his throat, giving a small shake of his head as he started to push open his motel door but caught Olivia’s eye as she leaned against the van, arms folded.

She held his gaze a beat or two before straightening and tossing her bag over her shoulder. “Sweet dreams,” she murmured, soft but brusque.

A low groan escaped his throat and he rested his forehead against the door, exhausted and _vexed_.

Five hours, with the sun high in the sky, found them barely rested but ready to move out. As the others were settling back into the van, Peter went in search of Olivia though whether it was to apologize or to search out an apology, he wasn’t sure. In the end, neither came true anyway.

“Hey, are you rea…” Peter threw open the flimsy door to Olivia’s motel bathroom, caught off guard but visibly unfazed by the sight of her leaning on the chipped once-white sink. “…dy?” Her fingers curled so elegantly around the beveled porcelain edge that a casual observer might have taken her for a violinist or pianist. But, admittedly, it wasn’t her fingers he was so startled by.

Meeting his eyes in the tiny medicine cabinet mirror, she issued a silent challenge, the simple black panties and modestly long hair all that stood between him and an utter annihilation of his self-control. Peter swallowed hard, her eyes following the motion of his Adam’s apple: up… and down…

They stood there for what felt like a millennia, the First People come and gone a thousand times in the span of a few racing heartbeats before Peter’s hand unclenched from the rusty doorknob. “Come on. Get dressed or we’ll leave you behind.” The words were gruff but the strained tone, the guilty look of lust that crossed his eyes before he turned away, were enough for Olivia.

 


End file.
